h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here by the Suffolk coast, with 48 hours to go, the sun has just come out.

Ok in the South East, looks like a nice day

Latest from the Met Office issued 0200 on Wednesday 21 Nov 2007

Outlook for Friday to Sunday:

Rain clearing southern England, then Friday will be dry, sunny and cooler, with a hard frost Friday night. Thereafter, turning unsettled and windy from the northwest with some rain.

No sign of any storm

If there is no storm will Dr PC shut up and go away?

Personally, I'm with the majority of scientists on this one: what man is doing IS having an effect on our climate. Not the sole factor. Al Gore is guilty of hyperbole, and focusses perhaps too exclusively on this influence as the over-riding factor (although to be fair, it's one of the few we can control).

I'm open-minded enough to listen to cogently put arguments to the contrary, and no doubt Mu Beta will be along shortly (if he's still following this increasingly unscientific discourse).

I'm less likely to listen to someone waving a magic wand and saying "I can see the future!"

Same here, its got to have proof in the pudding over at least 20 years, and yet so many follow the Man Made myth without the science behind it, just goes to show what people will follow

We need to centralise the means of prediction.

Traveller in Time seeing the future
"It is currently raining here.

My prediction is it will get dry,

ever,

probably before next year,

sure. "

Well, at least this time it's not religion that's having stones thrown at it.
Whatever the causes of climate change, it's caused some fog here.

This event is due within a week. A very tight schedule. Personally I'll give it longer.

Problem is, whichever way it goes I for one won't be convinced. I may, however, take more notice next time (if you lot haven't lynched the good Dr by then).

Does anyone remember 1987? No sign of it, apparently. Flatly denied on TV. Then it happened.

Well already its got something going for it, denial, and no sign of it, how odd!!

I'm bored now... This merry-go-round has lost it's sparkle...

Take a rest for a couple of days and see if there are any fireworks, you have peaked to early, you need some rest. Come back on the 23rd and throw some eggs at me then

ok, see, why does people asking you questions or suggesting your argument has holes in it amount to a personal attack for you?

you're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you

Interesting thread this.

Well I am a professional academic scientist, not an asrophysicist mind but a chemist and have been to quite a few lectures given by *real* experts in the field of atmospheric chemistry - heads of department, Fellows of the Royal Society, professorial rank, that sort of thing. Indeed I even briefly studied it at one point, although as that was only a module of an undergraduate degree it doesn't really mean much.

I can't think of any that would deny that the sun is involved in driving the whole of the Earth's Climate. Oddly enough, they know all about it. However it is also true that not one of them that I've seen has any opinion other than the current consensus that the current trends in climate change*** in terms of global warming cannot be explained without including activity by mankind, largely in terms of CO2 release from previously trapped sources like wood, coal and oil. They could be wrong but as evidence accumulates it's looking less and less good for the gainsayers as time progresses.

*** which are *not* the same thing as predicting the weather. Telling us it's going to be windy over the north sea is not the same as telling us that global temperatures are going to rise by 0.5 degrees C over the next 100 years for example.

Public opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with what is actually happening. So it is irrelevant to the climate change although not so irrelevant to voting in governments that might look to legislate to at least slow (or indeed reverse) the problems that we are likely causing with our activity. I'm not convinced this guy has anything positive to contribute here. Of course he seems to court publicity and so the newspapers and media love it because it sells stories. That is the trouble with the media though, it's very difficult to get anything out that doesn't get hijacked by journos or crackpots with an agenda.

Have a look at how Dr Corbyn scores on the crackpot index...there's a clear 40 pointer for the comparison to Galileo in this thread
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

(points would be higher if the index wasn't focussed on pure physics I note, but conversions are easy here)

I currently have more than a dozen peer reviewed publications out there which can easily be found with a search of my name in the usual science database search software (SciFinder Scholar and Web of Knowledge hosted by MIMAS). So what? Well I'm not remotely eminent although I continue working in hope . I've searched for Dr Corbyn and found precisely zero publications. And he speaks with *what* authority?

I've also read the paper in the 2001 edition of
Journal of atmospheric and solar-terrestrial physics as I have access to it. It's *one* paper which noone has ever cited since, I note (at least as far as WoK and SciFinder are concerned, and they are *huge* databases), yet is flashed all over the website of Weather action. A bit overblown don't you think?

A couple of tidbits from the paper they like to quote.

>.It uses a variety of statistical techniques to come up with success rates varying from 37% to 73% depending on the technique. 23 gales were successfully predicted, 21 gales were falsely predicted, and 18 gales occurred that were not predicted.<<
That doesn't sound particularly convincing to me.

Furthermore, according to that paper. Piers Corbyn (is he actually a doctor? What institution awarded him his PhD?) refuses to publish his weather prediction methodology.
Well alarm bells ring all over the place on that one. What's wrong with public scrutiny? If his methodology is so damn good a proper scientist would share this information for the good of all and also be *expected* to have it criticised as it's entirely worthless without this. If it is worthy, he has nothing to worry about surely?

One issue merchants are nearly always wrong, even if he successfully predicted dozens of storms right on the money with no mistakes, which he doesn't, I wouldn't take it as read that he has unchallengable authority on climate change issues. Noone does, not even an FRS.

Make of that what you will. You already seem to have decided who is right and who is wrong so I doubt I can change your mind.
A real scientist will look at the evidence and if the evidence trashes the theory then a new one that fits the evidence is needed and therefore sought. I wonder if Dr(?) Corbyn will likely change his mind, ever?

There's a server on Mimas? That's no moon...

Orcus

PYEB:
"The lobby that supports Man Made Climate Change are for the want of a better word, ignorant, about its cause, ."

"I guess it proves even the most literate of you can be taken in by this Msn Made hype."

" so many follow the Man Made myth without the science behind it, just goes to show what people will follow"

I'm starting to find this consistent line offensive. I, for one, did not take the *fact* that man-made CO2 emissions have changed the climate at face value, I was convinced very gradually as more results were published, until eventually the evidence became overwhelming. My opinions were *not* the result of reading the Daily Express and neither were they the result of unflinching faith in any single individual. All the data is freely available on the web including the IPCC report itself, and is readily understandable by anyone with GSCE physics. I suspect this is also the case with the vast majority of scientifically literate and rational "believers".

PYEB, on the other hand, has consistently refused to respond to any posts citing the actual science, and merely keeps trotting out the old solar activity routine, which I have now posted evidence to disprove twice.

Everyone is of course perfectly free to bury their own head in the sand and refuse to consider contrary evidence, but it is the height of arrogance to accuse those who take a more considered approach of being gullible.

http://mimas.ac.uk/


Scifinder's priniciple database is the Chemical Abstracts journal but uses others also. It is chemistry focussed though (unlike WoK hosted by MIMAS in the UK) so may not be the best place to look for astrophysics.
It certainly found Dr. Wheeler's paper on Corbyn's stuff though.

Sorry correct that, Dr. Wheeler's paper I found on the Web of Knowledge database.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that PYEB is indeed Dr Corbyn who has only joined h2g2 in last few days and posts of nothing else except about "Dr" Corbyn's predictions. Spam indeed and tosh by the sound of people on here who actually sem to know something about the subject.

Traveller in Time calculating
"It is not spam.

Not by most definitions at least. The information is unsollicitated at worst.

I have been doing some research for it just before 'PinYourEarsBack' entered in Peer Review. "

I find the logic behind linking "man predicts storm" to "climate change can't be man-made" too absurd to believe that this is anyone notable for anything.